After The Straw Poll, Huckabee and Brownback Downsize Iowa Campaigns

After the Straw Poll, Huckabee and Brownback have both significantly downsized their Iowa campaigns despite their top three finishes.

For Huckabee, who got the second-place spot in Ames, the downsizing is temporary:

Rather than kicking his Iowa campaign up a notch, second-place Ames Straw Poll finisher Gov. Mike Huckabee of Arkansas downsized his Iowa operation to just three paid staffers in the wake of his low-budget achievement.

“Right now were back down to three. We had, gosh 16 or 18 here for the Straw Poll,” Huckabee Iowa campaign manager Eric Woolson told the Iowa Indepenent. “Those folks have kind of scattered to the four winds.”

Woolson, who also serves as the Iowa campaign’s communications director and press secretary, said the lean campaign had imported much of the rest of its pre-Ames staff from other Huckabee offices around the nation in the weeks leading up to the Straw Poll. “We had four folks out from New Hampshire, we probably had 8 or 10 people from Little Rock, so we probably had closer to 20. This pace was packed!” he said, gesturing around the campaign’s small downtown Des Moines headquarters, which has plate-glass windows that overlook a busy street and advertise the candidate to passersby. “Some full-time volunteers came in from a couple of different states, so we were really packed for the Straw Poll.”

“Obviously, we’ll ramp back up for caucus time,” he continued.

For Brownback, who is actually closing one of his two Iowa offices, it could not be determined whether the downsizing would be temporary or a sign of worse things to come for his campaign:

Kansas Sen. Sam Brownback’s campaign shut down his second Iowa office, opened in Ames on June 21, after a third-place finish in the Ames Straw Poll earlier this month.

The campaign continues to operate out of its lone Iowa office in West Des Moines.

Iowa campaign spokesman John Rankin was unavailable for comment; a receptionist said he was “on vacation” but still responding to e-mail.

Contacted a second time by Iowa Independent, she clarified that Rankin was simply “out of town…not on vacation,” and remained reachable by e-mail.

After that story ran, Brownback’s communications director got in touch with Iowa Independent to clarify that closing their Ames office was part of their plan all along.

Perhaps neither campaign has received the post-Straw Poll bump in fund raising that the media predicted.